Biography

Sarin KC is Head of the Environmental Economics Unit at HITAP, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. Previously, he worked as a research analyst at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Ministry of Health and Population in Nepal.

As a health economist, he has helped institutionalise Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in countries like Bhutan, Ghana, and India. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was part of the COVID-19 Multi-Model Comparison Collaboration (CMCC) which provided guidance on contextualising infectious disease models to low-income settings. He co-led a study on vaccination certificates, influencing Thailand’s risk-based border policies, including the Phuket sandbox and bilateral agreements with Singapore. Currently, Sarin is the lead Secretariat for the Lancet Commission on ‘Strengthening the Use of Epidemiological Modelling of Emerging and Pandemic Infectious Diseases.’

His work in the Environmental Economics Unit aims to ensure the Thai health system is climate and carbon resilient. This includes studying the bidirectional impact of climate change and the health sector and identifying cost-effective and environmentally friendly adaptation and mitigation measures. He is also working to advance methodology and policy processes to incorporate the environmental impacts of health interventions into HTA.